Voltaire’s Candide

I just finished Voltaire’s classic Candide, and it has challenged some thinking while cementing some ever more solidly. Voltaire, actually named Francois-Marie Arouet, wrote Candide in 1759 as an indictment of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his metaphysical ideas. Voltaire’s hatred of Leibniz and his ideas was likely rooted in the contrast of Leibniz’s faithful devotion to Christ versus Voltaire’s humanist, anti-christ philosophies. Voltaire was a precursor of all that France became with the virtual collapse of the church, the humanist revolution, and the continuing godlessness.

Candide is a naïve man who ends up traveling the world as he is subjected to one horrible circumstance and act after another. Along the way he meets a stream of people who have been beaten down and trodden on by society, and they even have contests occasionally to see who is the more wretched.

Voltaire is trying to show that the world is a horrible place with random violence, disease and corruption, and that if there was a God he would have to be sadistic to have even created such a thing as human beings. This is in contrast to Leibniz who said that the world could not be perfect because it would therefore not be distinct from God, but that the world is as good as can be without being perfect. Leibniz argued that although we may not see it, every disaster, every unpleasant thing that may befall us, every disappointment is working out God’s goodness in some way.

Voltaire ends the book with the only happy man in the entire tome. The man works hard at what is set before him (tending a garden) because it keeps him from the three evils: boredom, vice and want. The man doesn’t spend his time questioning and arguing over life, but he simply submits to his state and makes the best of it. Eventually, Candide sees the wisdom in this and ends the book by responding to a philosophical remark with “but, we must tend our garden.”

Voltaire pointed out that the only way to judge one’s misery is to find out what he values most. I agree. If I value my possessions above all else, my poverty would be my misery. If I value my health above all else, my illness would be my misery. But if I value my God above all else, how can I be miserable in any condition? Voltaire proves the point even as he misses the point. Nothing on this earth, where moths corrupt and thieves break in to steal, should be valued as God.

You may be able to take my pencil…but try taking my salvation.